The Womb of Success

After much hesitating and agonizing, I've decided to try my knives at CUTCO once again. I knew there was a Vector office in Tallahassee long before I got hired and it's always been my assumption that, with the general close proximity of places in Tallahassee and the advantage of public transportation, I have to have better luck here than I did when I was stranded on Long Drive. I have a couple weeks before my jobs starts and even after it does, I won't be working more than twenty hours a week. I got to meet some grown people through Cabaret, so I won't have to depend on one lone associate to get my start. By all accounts, it seemed an easy prospect.  For some reason though, I couldn't help hesitating when the time came to actually do something. First, I reasoned, I had to know when I would be back in Tallahassee. That being over with, I had the time commitment to consider. That's not really a consideration since hours are flexible. Then of course there was the matter of getting to and from meetings, but it's two days a week and I'm not quite so friendless that I can't find anyone to get me once or twice. Finally, I sat down to figure out how many people I would actually be able to call the first day I came to a CUTCO phone jam and mustered up a good dozen names, give or take an old phone number and a lack of availability. Okay. I had exhausted all excuses to stall. Now all that was left was to make the call to the office.

...I haven't actually gotten around to that yet. Despite my having answered every logical objection, I couldn't get past the one objection that I couldn't reasonably answer: I'm scared. Only making an average of five appointments a week, nearly never selling ANYTHING, and often losing out on money because of cancellations was somewhat understandable when I had to walk to all of my appointments, lived in an area where I knew practically no one, and I didn't have access to the product's target demographic. Now, I can't speak to how successful I should be, but considering that factors have changed, I should probably do better...but what if I don't? What if I end up, after a couple of months of traipsing around Tallahassee with my trustee bag of knives, and spending a couple hours a night on my phone, not even having a base that I can return to if I take a break from selling for awhile? What if I come out of this summer, or however long I end up selling for, at the same promotion that I am now (which is rather dismal, considering I'm only about a studio set aways from my next promotion)? What if I look at my finances in August and find myself praying that my net check drops early so that I'll survive the first few weeks of school? What will I tell myself? What excuse will I have?

This is, if not the summer of no excuses, the summer of considerably less excuses. I feel in every morning that I get up later than my alarm and every prospect that I approach that I should be better by now. I have a job; I shouldn't be unemployable. I have enough pennies tucked away to take class; I shouldn't be a terrible dancer. I have access to scripts and music and practice materials; I shouldn't be a mediocre student of the arts. From the earliest days up to my teens I had factors to share in my failure: money, my parents, my environment. I resented them, but they lightened the load at the end of an interim and I had to figure out what went wrong. This time, the failure will be all mine. I don't know if I'm prepared for that. In absentia of the resume listing accolades from authorities and accomplishments in areas that interest me, I depend on my unfortunate circumstances to assert that I have talent and intelligence and potential. Potential is one of my favorite words. It's that old faithful crutch that failures favor when we haven't a leg to stand on in justifying our dismal lives. I could be president of the United States so long as I'm underage. I could've been president of Sudan if only I were a citizen. I can play Elle Woods on Broadway if the producers, writers, and audiences will just suspend their disbelief. At the end of the day, when I go to sleep not having earned my fatigue, I have a growing pile of rejection letters and not one piece of correspondence saying "I want you", and my checking account can barely withstand the service charge for making a withdrawal at an ATM, potential comforts me. Potential is the blanket I wrap around myself when I curl up on the floor and use my hair as a pillow. I can just feel my comfy little blanket being torn away by my one-of-a-kind luxury knives if I go through with this Vector thing. I stand in constant terror that some straw will break me and I'll find myself working at Captain D's to pay my rent while I chase move-in specials on Candler Road. I worry about staring at the mighty monster under the bed and discovering it was just a pile of empty dreams. I pray that, when I lose my potential blanket, I have something else to protect me in the cold light of day. I can't saw whether I want night to last forever.

And here we are again

So, once again, it's summertime and I am playing Little Red Riding Hood as the heat sets in and the drudgery of classes dissipates. There's something very exhausting about the dichotomy of summer. It's considered (for students) to be a vacation, but it's expected that we do something with that time. It's a chance to explore opportunities that aren't possible during the academic year, but it's depressing if none of those opportunities come to fruition. As eager as I was for the summer break to begin, now that it's here, I can hear the time bomb ticking; waiting to drop another great big shell of FAIL on my life. This is the way it's been for me. Will it change this time around?

The last time I had a major change in status quo, it was my job at Fund for the Public Interest, and my high hopes were dashed less than a week later. This time around, I have a more promising position, one I won't lose based on other people's personal prejudices and one that I'm not likely to lose due to poor performance. I'll be doing something I enjoy, so there won't be the dread of calling strangers that came with Vector or the resentment over how much effort I'm putting into it. Although I hesitate to jump for joy at the implication of progress, I do find comfort in at least saying that I'm not in the same place that I was last year.

This will be my first summer in Tallahassee and, consequently, my first summer on my own. I sincerely thank God that I won't be doomed to rotting at home under the confines of geography and lack of transportation at the same time that i wonder what I will do when I have options. I can take the bus; call a friend; walk a bit depending on the heat. I can do free things like go to the park and enjoy a good book or some things that cost like see a play or take a dance class. I'm actually dealing with advantages rather than compensating for disadvantages and it makes me feel excited (well, excited and scared). What will I do with myself? I know where I would like to come into the fall semester, but I know how to get there about as well as I know how to get from Covington to Tallahassee: the route is only familiar when I've gotten into it. I have to ask myself if I'm going to end up trying to figure out again where it all went wrong.
I'll have the answer in about ten weeks.

That Pesky Glass

You take a glass of about 16 ounces. You add eight ounces of milk. The glass is half empty. The glass is half full. You know cognitively that the glass is both, but your outlook in life correlates to which characterization you use to identify it. What difference does it make? You still have eight ounces of milk. You still haven't filled your glass. It's progress, presumably, if your intent is to fill a glass. If your intent is to drink a glass of milk, you may have wasted time more than necessary, or you may have saved yourself from spilling by stopping while you were ahead. It's all a matter of perspective, really. But perspective only matters if it's isolated. It's impossible to call a glass half empty without acknowledging that it is also half full. It is foolish to call the glass half full to accomodate for its being half empty. The assessment of the glass may prove to be fruitless altogether if, in the time you spend determining how good a place you're in, the milk spoils. And yet it is a mark of human nature to be acutely aware of our condition. Is it a mark of evolution to not be satisfied with 'just keep swimming', or is it an impediment to survival the way a child's demanding why a simple task must be done is an impediment to productivity? Perhaps it should be simplicity, and not complexity that we seek. Perhaps if the matters we stressed over were simpler, we would be stronger when addressing them. It's only milk. It's only a messy room. It's only one class. It's only one test. Mosaics are beautiful because of their pieces. In the information age, everything is a mosaic; we just have more pieces. Maybe life is not as hard as we make it...maybe is should comb my hair and go to sleep...